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Hong Kong's annual budget bill was passed on Tuesday in the Legislative Council (Legco) after a month-long filibuster.
The city's lawmakers finished voting on the amendments to the Appropriation Bill 2013. With 38 affirmative votes, 16 negative and one abstention, the Bill received its Third Reading.
The legislative approval is a relief to the government, as more than 60 departments may run out of cash to operate for next month due to the suspension of the budget bill, according to the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau.
Since the financial year started in April, the government has been functioning on an interim fund of HK$75.5 billion.
"The filibuster has placed the government in jeopardy and it could fall off a 'fiscal cliff' at any time in June", a local media reported last week.
Financial Secretary John Tsang welcomed the approval, saying that it could avoid large-scale shortage of funds for the government, the council and the judiciary.
The funds would be distributed as soon as possible, he said, but the money for the Hospital Authority and universities could be delayed. He blamed the filibuster which had definitely affected the appropriation schedule.
The Legco eventually came to vote on the bill after three of the initiators of the over 100-hour filibuster had been expelled from the conference hall. Several Legco members of the opposition camp had staged a protest against Jasper Tsang, the Legco president's decision to end the deadlock of lasting debates.
Being regarded as the "last tool" for lawmakers in Legco to block a bill, the filibuster, a delaying manoeuvre, which was firstly introduced to Hong Kong 14 years ago, has become controversial in the city's political system.
The pan-democrats insist in the filibuster's role as a weapon of mass destruction in defending people's freedom. While many of the other law makers said that it's a disturbance to Legco's effectiveness and a huge waste of public resources.
The representative of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions claimed that more than HK$38 million had been wasted in the 15-day filibuster on the budget bill. Starry Lee, a law maker from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong said that the deliberate delays had weakened Legco's power. The filibuster has paralysed Legco and demonstrated the tyranny of the minority, she said.
